Alabama Football: Five Questions with Nick Saban

Question: What do you think of the new NCAA
redshirt rule, and how do you plan to utilize it?

Nick Saban: I think it's
a great rule. I think this is a rule that really benefits players and player
development. It was very difficult for us as coaches to
make decisions as to whether we should play a player,
and when you decided to play a player, you had to
make sure he was going to play enough so that you wouldn't really
waste a year of his eligibility. So I think this is a very, very good rule. I don't really
think that -- other than the fact that we'll get to play
more young players - I don't think this is something that
we're going to try to strategically implement to players
to try to get players to stay longer, because, in our
case I don't know how much it would benefit us. We
have very few fifth-year players in this day and age of
football.